Gold is marginally higher in all currencies this morning but is trading near a one-week low and headed for the first weekly loss since December. Gold rose as much as 8.2% from the 6 month low set December 31 and reached a 2 month high of $1,279.61/oz prior to weakness this week.

Speculation that the Federal Reserve may reduce their massive bond buying programme may be making traders nervous. The Fed said on Wednesday that it will cut its monthly bond buying to $65 billion from $75 billion.

Gold traders and analysts are bullish for prices next week due to the likelihood that the emerging market asset sell will lead to haven demand. The Bloomberg gold survey shows that that for next week, there are 16 bullish analysts, 10 are bearish and 4 were neutral on prices.

Gold in USD - 3 Month

It is important to note that gold has rallied since and despite the Fed’s taper in late December. It is also worth noting that the Fed’s printing of nearly $0.78 trillion a year or $65 billion a month to buy U.S. government debt remains extraordinary and shows how fragile the U.S debt markets and economy still are.

There is also the possibility that the emerging markets crisis impacts developed markets as was seen in the Asian crisis in 1998. In our vastly interconnected financial and economic world, the notion that there will not be knock on effects may be proven to be optimistic. The risk of contagion remains as turmoil in markets tends to be contagious

As long as the turmoil continues in the emerging economies and U.S. and global stock markets come under pressure, gold is likely to remain in demand as a safe haven.

Economic concerns and the risk of currency devaluations in emerging markets may lead to greater demand for gold in those markets.

People in Asia and especially China, India view gold as a store of value and one of the key reasons that they own gold is in order to protect against the devaluation of paper currencies. It is hard to get data on gold demand in many smaller emerging markets countries such as Argentina, Venezuela and South Africa but it is safe to say that a sudden bout of currency weakness should lead to inflation hedging buying.

The data from Turkey shows that demand has been very robust there in recent months and should the lira continue to decline in value, the gold souks in Istanbul will do brisk business.

Growth in emerging markets, especially China and India, contributed to much of the commodities demand we have seen in recent years. Thus a slowdown in China and other economies could hurt demand for commodities in general. However, gold's store of wealth and money credentials should see it insulated from this due to safe haven demand.

There is still a debate amongst many in the western world about whether gold is a safe haven.

However, in China, Asia and most emerging markets there is a strong belief in gold as a safe haven due to their experience with paper currencies. People in Argentina can attest to that fact after their currency, the peso, fell 25% against gold in January alone.

The currency crisis in the emerging markets may lead to a renewal of the recently dormant currency wars and may be a prelude to a global currency crisis. Just this week, the World Bank's former chief economist said the world should replace the US dollar with a single global super-currency, saying it will create a more stable global financial system.

"The dominance of the greenback is the root cause of global financial and economic crises," Justin Yifu Lin told Bruegel, a Brussels-based policy-research think tank. "The solution to this is to replace the national currency with a global currency."

The currency and gold wars of recent years are set to continue.

Grant Williams’ excellent recent article on the continuing gold wars is a must read.

Grant Williams and the team at Mauldin Economics have been producing excellent market commentary and insights for many years. Williams has written ‘Things That Make You Go Hmmm’ since 2009 and it has become a must read weekly commentary.

Grant’s recent edition grabbed our attention for a number of reasons:

It’s timely and very relevant.

For years we have been expressing concerns that the gold price may be manipulated. These concerns have long been dismissed as “conspiracy theories” but the theories may become “conspiracy facts” as financial regulators investigate price manipulation today.

Grant brings together many strands that we have covered in our Market Update in recent months and years. He is fast becoming one of the more knowledgeable commentators writing about the gold market.

I appreciate these articles bc it means that another drop in price is immanent. Nice, makes it easy to always fish real coins at the bottoms while placing a short in paper, which gives an extra boost for cash.

Sadly those opposite articles, about how bad gold is and that the price will definitively drop, are quite rare lately, which makes it difficult to get another boost by going long the paper.

Because i too am Junior Mogambo Ranger (JMR) kind of, i still think the price would be close to zero if gold was not subject to the central bank 'gold buyers of last resort' (GBOLR) syndrome. If you ask me, the price is being manipulated higher, and not lower by creating an artificial demand. I managed to convince my son to sell his gold at 1600 when i first became aware of the 'gold buyer of last resort' effect i just mentioned. It has been going down ever since.

True price discovery will happen at money printing banned (MPB) o-clock. It will probably then be traded using the bones of extinct species as a currency or something tangible that has intrinsic value like that. Or beads, or coloured pebbles.

gold is to be worshiped just like the money changers worship their fiat. oh, and don't forget to drop some gold in the box on the way out, (prefer fiat as much easier to buy food with-conversion thingy plus fees)...

boogerbently........They are manipulating the gold price higher, or the price would be driven to Zero. The central banks are constrained, it is like a gold chain around their necks, to be "the gold buyer of last resort".The central banks have no choice but to buy gold (At this time.)or their own gold would not be worth a tinkers cusp.

Some of my other thoughts on this:Due to increasingly mechanised/chemical extraction methods, gold is no longer rare. It is as common as the destruction of the environment through the use of the ultra poisonous chemicals that are used to extract it.

If the psychiatric condition of the markets presents as wanting things that are increasingly rare, just for fun, so that they can blow up or screw things completely, then rare earths should give more bang for the fiat currency/fractional reserve/etc buck.

In the article from the link above from "azizonomics", the sense i make of it is that the central bank don't care what price gold is as they can QE (Quantitatively ease) QE-Gold the price no matter what it is.

The central banks are constrained to take gold out of circulation by buying it all up like locking up real estate to stop the particular market from collapse. This is what i have been able to discover in my hobyist capacity as a economic psychiatrist so far. It isn't easy!!

Like candy bars now ubiquitously costing over $1 (vending machines always charging 1.10 or 1.35 or something) I strongly think AT LEAST 800ish or so is that minimum for gold. The stock of fiat that has been printed is insane already; massive inflation already unleashed. The miners are going to balk at prices so low and some undoubtedly are already on the ropes/having to get hostiley taken over by bigger companies who can consolidate as they can survive this paper pushing takedown.

People in Asia and especially China, India view gold as a store of value and one of the key reasons that they own gold is in order to protect against the devaluation of paper currencies. It is hard to get data on gold demand in many smaller emerging markets countries such as Argentina, Venezuela and South Africa but it is safe to say that a sudden bout of currency weakness should lead to inflation hedging buying.

And the people of the US listen to a snake oil salesman from Kenya and believe in fiat money and a central bank of Jewsih bankers who have ruined the fabric of a once very vibrant economy to line thier own pockets and those of their tribal members. What a shame to watch!

mfl tuc. taking your thoughts; they are the controllers and have their stores in fiat.

and of course some have gold-faber ect. majority of controllers do not.

only way gold bugs win is if they lose control. but they are the controllers. so explain to me in detail how gold works when they control the controls that keep your golden dreams from reality?

just askin for a shit kicken, but really, this is what is happening day to day, month to month, year to year decade to decade. not ignorant of history! but really do you think the one percenters in CONTROL AND BACKED BY LAW/VIOLENCE are going to let gold be viable as currency. wish/think/wake the fuck up and join the world controled by people you hate. let your action coincide with reality...

oh and the messiah is coming-still looking and waiting! all eyes to the sky.

Control is fleeting, as history shows. The PTB will loose control again. History will repeat and the reason is a 4% psycopathic population ever willing to to claw its way to the top.

Decades! what was the price of gold a decade ago? Two decades ago? Most pm detractors have very narrow time bands and are looking for the quick buck or speculative returns. You sound like this is your camp.

Don't kid yourself. Gold is and always has been King. To this day it is worth killing for in the minds of the 4%. Think Lybia.

They have to feed the monster. He wants only phyzz. They keep him chained and tamed by regular feedings. Every day, more and more people are becoming aware of these currency malfunctions all around the world.

The day the monster doesn't get his, he'll bust those chains and run amok.

And why is it that Nobody, including Sprott, GATA etc, has requested the documents of the CFTC "Enquiry" into Silver manipulation? Suely it would be interesting to know what the JPM whistle blowers had to say and, more importantly, why they reached the conclusion that there was no evidence of illegal activity? Especially, of course, if that conclusion was reached because The Fed is above the law?

Sprott doesn't want to rock the boat, and I think GATA also agrees that at this point they don't need to push any harder because it's already a foregone conclusion that this whole thing is going to collapse. They will just sit back outside the blast zone and the backlash that's inevitably going spread as the whole system continues to commit suicide.

Sprott, I'm sure, also doesn't want the same wrath that the Hunt brothers had come down on their heads way back when. We know the Fed and the government scum are going to be slinging blame like crazy in all directions the worse this whole situation gets with the economy. The last thing Sprott wants is be made the centerpiece of the blame as some "Canadian" criminal who tried to destroy the American economy.

The government is already setting up the scenario that after the collapse they will blame us "preppers" for "hoarding" food, PM's, ammo, gas, generators, etc., etc., and they've set up the NDAA laws to confiscate everything we have in order to give it away to all the sheople who didn't heed our warnings to prepare for the collapse.

The government will blame everybody and anything else but themselves for the collapse they deliberately created.

There is this thing called "Freedom of Information" which TPTB, including Bloomberg, use when it suits them. I would imagine that a FOI request to CFTC would result in documents which would be 95% redacted. But we have to start somewhere?